I Like Warm Beverages

Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Apologies to any G. Love and Special Sauce fans.

So, yeah, it's winterish here all of a sudden, with overnight temps in the 20s and daytime windchill temps in the 20s.

Despite much layering, some of which is depicted here, different rotating parts of my body were getting cold on the first couple hours of our bike ride yesterday. A coffee stop and insertion of chemical toe warmers made all the difference for the second half. Although I still am not sure whether the sensation of cycling slowly through thick muck was caused by cold muscles or the fact that I was wearing two pairs of pants. I had a nice chat with Matt while pedaling down the nearly vacant bike path (best part about riding in the cold!) about ideas for motivating my team to hit a fairly aggressive fundraising goal this year.

After a nice stretchy yoga to get the kinks out this morning, I stopped for tea to make a dent in the very generous gift card my former coworkers gave me. I decided to use the balance to buy loose tea, using up the entire gift card and spending, uh, a ton of my own money. But I'm set for a cozy winter of drinking!

Here we go! Brrr!

Highs and lows

High points:

🍁 Scanning Fall from my usual river-as-seasonal-barometer overlook at Fort Snelling (pic below).

🚴‍♀️ Warming up by climbing the Montreal hill.

🗼 Walking up the steps of the rarely-open Highland Park water tower and scanning the area from the observation deck (pics below).

🚴‍♀️ Riding through my beloved, quiet, cold Swede Hollow (the name fits!), on the new-to-me Streetcar Trail in Mahtomedi (?), and past a pretty farm in Lake Elmo.

🤢 Not throwing up after eating spicy pad thai for breakfast, drinking coffee, and having ultra spicy wings for lunch.

Low points:

🌬 Variable weather requiring multiple adjustments of layers.

⚠️ The first black SUV that passed within a foot of me, and the second one that only gave me about two feet.

🔑 Losing my house and garage keys.

🚴‍♀️ Knowing that there are only about 6 weeks left of getting out on my road bike.

Where have all the mulberries gone?

Today's ride was my second annual Oktoberfest visit to Badger Hill brewery in Shakopee. I meet Dan there after he mountain bikes at a nearby trail, we have a beer together, and we buy beer glasses we don't need.

While I often remark on the majestic Mississip, the Minnesota River is nothing to scoff at. I passed over it a few times today, including when on the Bloomington Ferry Trail bridge, which is where I ate handful after handful of mulberries mid-ride in June. Sadly, I just ate a Clif bar there today.

I was glad to get this relatively short ride in before it started raining. I spent the rainy late afternoon at the cheap theater with my nephews, watching Wonder Woman. I'm glad that they don't question woman superheroes and just accept that they are badasses, and also that they will hang out with their crochety old aunt,  even joining her for dinner, in exchange for a movie ticket and some snacks.

du Lhut

I skipped what would've been a good weekend to bike in either bike-friendly Mpls or bike-friendly Duluth to instead explore Duluth with Dan and one half of my parents.

The highlight of the weekend definitely was touring Glensheen Mansion, which I've driven by a ton of times, but never visited. I liked it better than the railroadeer James J. Hill House - probably because it was so well preserved with original furnishings. I like to think of the super rich Congdons (rich due to good mining investments in MN and orchard investments in the Pacific NW) and the Hills in the same era, schmoozing like the characters from a British TV show. Or from a Wooster and Jeeves book. 

Anyhow, here are some photos, with captions! (Oooh la la.)

Sat a.m. sunrise from our Airbnb

Glensheen pier in Lake Superior. A big portion was removed, and this piece was grandfathered in.

There's a little ol' Leprechaun striking a senior portrait pose
on this bridge over the creek next to Glensheen.

Fancy servants' entrance. They think the Congdons
were extra nice to their servants
because they had such humble beginnings.

This foyer is pretty much all that reminded me of the Hill House.

Such beautiful windows throughout; highly impractical, I'd think, considering the location.

Check out the color of these lampshades when turned on.

Same ones, when turned off. There were a lot of fixtures like that,
but these were the best photographed ones. And I like the style.

My favorite room! The breakfast room.
The glass was painted, rather than stained glass.

The breakfast room from another angle, showing how green it was,
highlighting the wood, and showing the fancy butler's pantry.
That fountain on the wall was used to water all the plants that used to fill this room. Sigh.

My dad at Gooseberry Falls. He and I kept taking pictures of each other
because our lame travel companions hate having their photos taken.

Duluth is named after a French explorer, who first visited the area about 335 years ago. That's ancient history for Minnesota...

Holy sh*t

I am still flabbergasted.

It was a great post-work, 40+ mile ride, muchly in the dark. Near the end of it all, the manhole cover I rode over must have been a bit deeper set than it appeared.

I hit it, both my hands shot up off my handlebars, I swerved yet maintained immediate control likely due to being clipped in, and caught my handlebars with the insides of my wrists when my arms came back down. I'm amazed I didn't crash to the ground, am even more amazed I didn't crash into Matt, and am very appreciative that he is a totally unflappable rider.

I had been planning on posting either about my sweaty fast ride this past weekend or the pretty yet short fall rides I've taken around town, but really, all I can keep thinking is exactly what I said to Matt after disaster was averted: "Holy Sh*t!"

Caught between two extremes

I spent a lot of time on my bike this past weekend, and then not at all since. Still haven't figured out my new work routine.

Saturday's highlight was a slow moving bike tour of St. Paul buildings designed by Cap Wigington, a lead civil architect of the first half of the 1900s - - a noteworthy accomplishment, given the fact that he experienced a lot of racism as an African American. Coolest thing to learn? He designed most of the winter carnival ice palaces that have ever existed.

We went to a church he'd worked on - St. James A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal). Interestingly, the congregation built its first church in 1880 (scraping together gifts averaging $0.55). The first A.M.E. church was started about 100 years earlier after the Methodists were total jerks, in short, to their own church members who were black.

Sunday, I rode as fast as possible to and from yoga, met some Bike MS teammates and did a nice ride that meandered along the Mississippi, ate a great burrito, and bought myself a glass mosaic at the neighborhood art crawl. The mosaic artist has a lot of her stuff on display at the coffee shop where I ate my burrito, and I've been admiring it for months. Her work, not the shop or the burrito. Although I would recommend the burrito without hesitation. Plus the coffee shop now sells beer, which goes great with burritos.

Tonight's MS Society fundraiser event was a good reminder to me of why I do much of what I do on a bike. I'm lucky to be able to support their work.

Excuses, excuses

On the bright side, I do not have a blood clot in my leg again, I managed to get my flu shot, and clinic staff think I am fit.

I *am* curious to know what the heck is up with this weirder-than-my-normal-swollen-ankle-tendonitis-10-day mystery calf pain and new random swollen calf patch.

I was going to take my fat tire bike on a dirt trail tonight. Are leg ultrasounds and the embarrassment of being seen in my least flattering undies the lengths I go to, to avoid trail riding??

Seriously, though, I suspected that all was fine (my only risk factors that are the same as in 2010 are my genes), but if there's anything I learned this year from a good friend's experience is that you don't mess around with the vascular system.

And now, to reschedule that trail ride...